macrumors 68020

Oh it was I recall when you HAD to use Steam to play Counterstrike and Halflife 1. The hate was huge because the system was way worse than what EA have now. It was buggy, slow and destroyed the user experience without at the time any real user benefits.

Over the first few months/years they improved the system dramatically. For the last few years if you told someone Steam used to be unusable nobody would believe you! I would personally give EA the benefit of the doubt as I have seen a service turn from hated to loved before and that was Steam.

Their licensing terms on Origin are pretty much the same as Steam and nobody hates Steam. If they make some improvements then it could be a good boost for all gamers.

Companies tend to slow down with innovation if they don't have viable rivals so Steam having competition can only help all online services improve which is a good thing in my view.

The only problem EA have is that is popular these days to assume EA is evil even if they are acting like everyone else. The "Origin is spyware" myth is a good example, there was briefly a bug which they fixed but apart from that they actually report slightly less information than Steam do.

If you notice for example Steam collect stats on what applications you have installed not just Steam installed apps. These stats come from Steam checking your Applications folder for what apps you have installed. However when EA did this it was called spyware.

Anyway as the saying goes the truth is in the eating so lets see what happens

macrumors 68040

I really dislike Origin, but mostly due to pricing. Games are always twice as expensive on Origin, for some reason they have some insane regional pricing that makes no sense at all. New triple-A releases are 50-60 Euro on steam, and 90-110 Euro on Origin. Origin might be fine in US, but it's not in many europeean countries.

The language localization is also very bad. I have mailed Origin support about it a few times, and it took quite awhile before they even understood what I was talking about. (Basically, Norwegian language localization was a mix of various languages, including finnish and english..)

Also, if I scroll my Origin library on my MacBook Air (i5 1.7Ghz) it uses 100% CPU. Just running Origin kills the battery life. Steam might not be the best optimized application, but it's loads better.

macrumors G3

EA don't get it. Origin is disliked because it isn't wanted. Not because it is genuinely a terrible program with some rather questionable spyware tenancies that sells awfully overpriced games made by a company that likes to do nothing but reduce game-play and functionality with every sequel. But because one DRM/gaming social network choice is enough and that happens to be the one that is open to selling games from everyone.

As long as EA continue to insist on having their own little special club, I won't buy their games. They are only alienating themselves with the insistence of being closed and hostile to their customers.

macrumors 68020

EA don't get it. Origin is disliked because it isn't wanted. Not because it is genuinely a terrible program with some rather questionable spyware tenancies

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Having read all the technical details while setting games on both systems the DRM restrictions (if you want to call them that) are identical for both. As for any Spyware they both report with user connect anonymous data which is almost identical in nature.

one DRM/gaming social network choice is enough and that happens to be the one that is open to selling games from everyone.

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EA allow all other publishers on the system just like Steam do, for example Rome Total War is on Origin. Some publishers like 2K are not on Origin just like EA are not on Steam.

I get your idea but I think allowing one company to dominate without competition is not good for the entire industry and in the end customers.

It would be better I agree if all companies including EA, 2K Valve etc sold all their games on all the different stores and users could just pick their store of preference. However large companies being what they are EA want their games exclusive to the Origin store and Valve want their games exclusive to the Steam store. Added to this various companies will or will not put their games on various stores for tactical, legal and financial reasons making the landscape a little complex at times.

As long as EA continue to insist on having their own little special club, I won't buy their games. They are only alienating themselves with the insistence of being closed and hostile to their customers.

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Personally I do think EA games being only on Origin is a bit of a downer but equally Halflife for example is only on Steam so it can cut both ways.

macrumors 68020

In OS X, you can play games purchased through Origin without having to keep the client open.

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All Feral games on Origin run with Feral's DRM no extra code from EA at all. In fact they are byte for byte IDENTICAL to the version we sell on our own store!

This is true for all Feral games on all stores apart from Steam and Mac App Store which use their own store specific DRM. Even so the actual game exe will be the same so their should be no difference in stability between any of the versions as they are all compiled from exactly the same project.

Having to have Steam running is not a requirement btw but given how Steam is setup it is the recommended way of making sure all the Steam features work correctly. Some companies have Steam DRM AND their own but that's just a little excessive in my eyes

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